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Saturday, September 7, 2013

Stack Rundown, 09/07/2013

It was quite a large week for me. 15 books in total, not counting the ones I covered on the site. Why's that? Well, you have Forever Evil launching, villains month, Marvel started another crossover with Battle of the Atom because why not, nearly every Image book I read decided to come out this week, and more! Consequently, this means next week will actually be a very short one for me. Something like eight or nine.

Forever Evil #1

Ultraman gets high on Kryptonite, and that's pretty fucking hilarious. Oh, he also doesn't like the sun, so what does he do? Moves the damn moon in front of it. I like this crazy ass addict. Anyways, this was definitely a set up of an event series, lots of bad shit goes down, lots of questions remain unanswered (as in, what actually happened to the League?) and unless you're completely jaded by the New 52 at this point, there's a lot to be interested in because of all this. Yeah, there's the Nightwing stuff, which I'm sure isn't over, but there's also the Joker… maybe… Penguin seems to think he's hiding amongst the society, ready to undermine it, and you know, I wouldn't be surprised if he gets an Infinite Crisis-like moment in the end. All in all, I thought it was a pretty good start to the event, if anything, it gave a lot to digest, almost too much, but with this playing out in the mini series and other tie ins, I'm really looking forward to seeing how this all gets expanded upon.

The Flash #23.1

"Man, that's one angry monkey," was my main thought coming out of this issue centered around Grodd, because that's essentially what he is, an big stinking angry ape. Here all the intelligent Gorillas are being all peaceful, then Forever Evil happens, I guess the Crime Syndicate frees Grodd, and he comes back to take over Central City, because, say it with me, he's a big stinking angry ape. That's pretty much the gist of it all, but for however simple the plot was, I thought it was an entertaining enough issue, and apparently it's ending of Grodd getting bored and wanting more, will tie into the Rogues' Forever Evil mini series, which I plan to pick up.

Green Arrow #23.1

You know why this issue worked so well? Because it made sense in the current story arc of the title, and was produced by the regular writer/artist team of Lemire and Sorrentino. Now many Villains Month books actually seem to be able to stand next to that. As one would expect from the cover, this was a story all about Count Vertigo, and from what I can tell, Lemire is pretty much doing his own thing with the character. He's one cold motherfucker, with quite the shitty past. Mom was a noble turned whore/drug addict who sold him to science, where he'd be turned into a weapon. Leave it to Beaver it was not, for Count Vertigo. As you'd expect, he'd eventually take a turn, initiated by blowing up the head of the doctor who transformed him, and as always with Vertigo, Sorrentino portrays that beautifully. Then it jumps to the present and Vertigo meeting with his mother… you knew what was coming, but man… Matricide sure is grim! But I guess that's what you go with when you're a cold motherfucker like that.

Justice League #23.1

When I wrote about Wonder Woman while she was on New Genesis, I mentioned that the Kirby New Gods stuff was a little before my time, so I'm generally open to new interpretations. So, here we get Darkseid's origin… and it sort of reminded me of the previous arc of Thor, with Gorr the god butcher. But what was more interesting was that the issue was told from Trickster's point of view, and apparently Darkseid has been chasing after her? And that's what guided him to the regular earth of the DCU? But when he invaded, he said he was looking for his daughter, so does that mean Trickster IS his daughter? …but she was captured on earth, and Trickster wasn't. Yeah, it's a little confusing, but we find out what happened to Earth 2 Superman, and it's somewhat familiar to what happened with Batman in Final Crisis, so that could be bad. Overall, it was an okay issue, I was just a bit confused at some bits.

Green Lantern #23.1

This was a strange issue for one main reason, and that's the fact that I sort of already read a bulk of this issue. If you've been paying attention, all the Green Lantern books have been getting Rags Morales variants recently, and they've been telling Relic's origin, only here, we get all the pages inked and colored. To be fair, not all the pages were released as variants, so some gaps were filled, but still… sort of a strange practice. Anyways, we find out why Relic is against the use of the light, and that is because the emotional spectrum is not infinite, it is the essence of life, and once depleted, the universe will die, like his. What impresses me, is how seamlessly this fits into the continuity that has already been set up with the emotional spectrum. This adds great amounts of depth to the concept, without stepping on the toes of what came before. Rob Venditti was definitely the right choice to take on the Green Lantern franchise, he's killing it (in a good way) so far.

Justice League of America #7.1

Fun fact, I wrote this little blurb a few days ago, then Evernote decided to be racist against me or something and now it's gone. I don't know! Now I have to do it all over again. What I had said was that I thought it sucked Ales Kot got the boot from Suicide Squad so early, but I wasn't going to hold it against Matt Kindt, at the same time, I'm generally unfamiliar with Kindt, so there were a lot of questions. This issue sold me on Kindt taking on Suicide Squad. His Deadshot is spot on, a cold and calculated son of a bitch, who gets the job done. This was the best Deadshot I've read since some of the early Secret Six issues, like the one where he's having a crisis of conscious or something and is talking to a priest he knows. The moment where I knew Kindt got him? When Deadshot killed his target's son, so there wouldn't be someone like him looking for revenge. As grim and disgusting as that act is, it's perfect Deadshot.

Trillium #2

I thought this issue went by pretty quickly, but that is pretty much the only negative I had against it. I think the reason why it went by so quickly was because of this issue's hook which I really liked, and that was that fact that both Nika and William couldn't understand each other, due to there being thousands of years between them. So one character would say something we'd be able to read, and then the other would say something that the first and the reader couldn't understand, so you can see how it'd read quickly. It's still a really interesting story, and watching these two communicate without actually being able to do it properly was entertaining to read, because they have to mime things out or draw them in the dirt. Then they get totally trip balls maaaaaaaan, on trillium, instantly know each other, but are just as instantly separated… and now everything is set up, so let's see where it goes from here.

X-Men: Battle of the Atom #1

Not to be outdone by DC starting their own crossover this week, Marvel has to start their second as well. Before we get into this, I have to say… is there ANY future in the Marvel Universe where it's not completely fucking shitty? I mean, here you got Magik looking into the future like "AH! It's shitty!" because of the O5 or whatever, but over in Cable and X-Force, they're dealing with a whole different shitty future. What a depressing existence. Anyways, this sort of sets the stage for the event, Sentinels attack, almost kill young Cyclops, which almost wipes regular Cyclops from existence… yeah, time travel stuff, the more you think about it, the more your head hurts. Then a group of mystery X-Men show up from the future which leads us to…

All-New X-Men #16

This book, where those X-Men come back from time to be like "YO! Time traveling fucks everything up… but don't mind us, we promise to not fuck that much up!" You got Deadpool, Kitty, Iceman, Beast, Xavier's grandson, some lady I'm not familiar with and someone in a Xorn suit. So while they're all figuring shit out, Jean decides to go AWOL and is all "Hey young Beast, we totes made out, wanna bail?" and he's all "nah." So Jean for her second choice and just gets Cyclops to bail with her… YEAH. Young Jean is the Britta of the X-Men right now… just screwing shit up. If you don't get the reference, go watch Community. But after that all goes down, fucking Xorn is also Jean, so where the hell did she come from? Was she the Jean who came from the past, and stayed through the present into the future these X-Men came from? Confused? So am I! Sort of. It's pretty crazy in a good way though. So far so good.

Witchblade #169

Hey! I liked this issue more than I thought I was going to. I was pretty worried with pretty much every element of Tim Seeley's run coming together with one issue left, that there'd just be too much going on, and I'd just get lost, which to be honest, I was on the verge of. But! That didn't happen, and I thought Seeley managed to balance everything he'd been working with for the past 19 or so issues pretty well. Was there still a lot going on? Yeah, sort of, but it turned out way better than I expected, and I thought it was a nice conclusion to Seeley's run. Unfortunately, there were multiple inkers and colorists, similar to last issue, and I didn't think they blended too well together, creating some consistency issues, but oh well, what're you going to do. All in all, I thought Seeley's run on the title was pretty good… now someone get him writing Catwoman! Ron Marz returns next month, and I'm very cautiously optimistic about it… not a whole lot is known, so I don't know man. Let's do this?

Chew #36

Or Chew #29.5? Yeah, it was one of those issues! Instead of staying in the here and now, we step back a little into Toni's life before she dies, and get a glimpse into what she was doing while she knew she was eventually going to get killed. Despite that premise, most of the issue was Toni helping out her sister Sage, who has the power to see the past of anyone near by who is eating the same thing she's eating… yeah, all the Chus have power apparently. As one would expect, there are a lot of laughs, a lot of little notes in the background left by Guillory (my favorite: "Hiring: Italian plumber. Must be fluent in turtle") and Poyo fighting a giant corn monster and super fish… yeah, pretty standard issue of Chew, if I do say so myself. As always, this series is fucking great.

Satellite Sam #3

When I first read about this series, I saw Fraction and Chaykin, read through the premise and thought "yeah, this is probably going to be pretty smutty!" But the first two issues were honestly a bit tame, compared to my expectations… but #3 brings the smut! Evangelical stars with promiscuous pasts! TV execs having… oral conversations with another exec's wife. Yeah! Smut! But in all honesty, this is a pretty great book. I love the setting, and just generally have an interest in the history of early television, so setting this sort of guilty pleasure story with that backdrop really does a lot to get me hooked. This issue also set up what seems to be the main plot going forward, and that's the drunk son of the actor who played Satellite Sam and the evangelical woman with a seedy past, going through all the dead guy's lady pictures, trying to find the woman who was with him the night he died… maybe she killed him! I don't know. Probably. Still sort of have to go back to the character page every now and then to get reminded who people are, everyone looks similar, and the black and white (while I understand why it isn't colored) doesn't help differentiate people, but oh well! Still great.

Invincible #105

This issue is full of "uh-ohs" and "that's going to be a bad decision." Letting a brutal dictator go free on the honor system to not be a dick? Yeah, that won't come back to bite Nolan in his alien ass. Robot missing all the power and worship he had in an alternate dimension? Yeah, he isn't going to take an evil turn down the line. Aside from all those bad feels, this was a quieter issue, no eyeballs dangling from the sockets or any mess like that. You had Mark and Eve doing soon to be parent stuff, as well as Mark talking to his father about being a dad. And wouldn't you know, here we have two characters who've been together for quite some time, getting engaged, and having a kid, and gosh, do I find that pretty darn interesting AND entertaining… Unlike some other characters who got engaged, but the company who owns them believes that marriage is boring and stifles interest in characters… HMMM, I wonder who I'm talking about.

Invincible Universe #6

Holy crap, this title has gotten to issue six, and there's going to be a seven! A Guardians of the Globe book has never gotten that far! So last issue, the leader of North Korea gave himself super powers, and this issue, everyone has to deal with that clusterfuck. Like I said last month, the premise is so ridiculous and stupid, you can't help but enjoy it. It's literally the worst case senario! Imagine Kim Jong Un with Superman like powers? Do you know how fucked everyone would be? And that's what these two issues were! It was great! And what's the end result? Cecil decides that it's time to stop waiting to react, and instead, hunting out threats and taking care of them before the worst can happen? That's fucking right, Invincible X-Force! Love it!

Army of Darkness vs. Hack/Slash #2

Last but not least! This issue was supposed to come out two weeks ago, but it obviously didn't, and I was super bummed out. Why? Because this book is fucking awesome, that's why. It's violent, gorey, funny and sexy, emphasis on the sexy with this issue. Seeley lays on Cassie's sex appeal thick in the opening pages of this issue, mostly with Ash drooling over her, but then he balances it out with a bunch of naked white supremacists racist assholes in a prison shower. Equality! So it all works out! This book is just plain fun, and it's really just because Cassie and Ash. Those two play so well off each other, you could have them picking up trash and it'd probably be entertaining. Added to the instant fun Cassie and Ash create, I also enjoyed how Seeley effortlessly weaved some of his own mythology with the Black Lamp Society into Ash's story. It's not an overwhelming addition, but as someone who is a Hack/Slash fan first, I enjoyed seeing that little addition. This is definitely one of my favorite books this year, sucks that it's only a mini series!